Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T04:13:22.376Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Unequal Access to College in China: How Far Have Poor, Rural Students Been Left Behind?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2015

Hongbin Li ,
Prashant Loyalka ,
Scott Rozelle ,
Binzhen Wu  and
Jieyu Xie
Hongbin Li
Affiliation:
Tsinghua University. Email: lihongbin@sem.tsinghua.edu.cn.
Prashant Loyalka
Affiliation:
Stanford University. Email: loyalka@stanford.edu.
Scott Rozelle
Affiliation:
Stanford University and Renmin University of China (visiting professor). Email: rozelle@stanford.edu.
Binzhen Wu
Affiliation:
Tsinghua University. Email: wubzh@sem.tsinghua.edu.cn.
Jieyu Xie*
Affiliation:
Shanghai Finance Institute and Tsinghua University.
*
Email: xiejy.09@sem.tsinghua.edu.cn (corresponding author).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the 1990s, rural youth from poor counties in China had limited access to college. After mass college expansion started in 1998, however, it was unclear whether rural youth from poor counties would gain greater access. The aim of this paper is to examine the gap in college and elite college access between rural youth from poor counties and other students after expansion. We estimate the gaps in access by using data on all students who took the college entrance exam in 2003. Our results show that gaps in access remained high even after expansion. Rural youth from poor counties were seven and 11 times less likely to access any college and elite Project 211 colleges than urban youth, respectively. Much larger gaps existed for disadvantaged subgroups (female or ethnic minority) of rural youth from poor counties. We also find that the gaps in college access were mainly driven by rural–urban differences rather than differences between poor and non-poor counties within rural or urban areas.

摘要

在 20 世纪 90 年代, 中国贫困地区的农村青年上大学的机会非常有限。即便 1998 年大学扩招后, 贫困地区农村青年是否享有更多机会也不甚明朗。本文目的在于检验大学扩招后, 贫困地区农村学生与其他学生在考取大学乃至名牌大学上的差距。为此我们使用了 2003 年全国参加高考学生的数据。结论显示: 即便在扩招之后, 这种差距依然很大。具体地, 贫困地区农村学生考取大学的机会比城市学生小 7 倍; 考取 211 名牌大学的机会比城市学生小 11 倍。这一差距在贫困地区农村学生的子群体中 (贫困地区农村、女性、少数民族学生) 更大。我们也发现这些差距主要由城乡差别, 而不是由贫困与非贫困地区差别所致。

Keywords

Chinainequalitycollege accessruralpoorcollege expansion不平等大学入学农村贫困中国大学扩招
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 221 , March 2015 , pp. 185 - 207
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

We would like to thank the Tsinghua University China Data Center for supporting this work. The support of CK and Mei Liu is also gratefully acknowledged. Hongbin Li acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project ID: 71025004 and 71121001). Binzhen Wu acknowledges the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project ID: 70903042 and 71373136).

References

Ayalon, Hanna, and Shavit, Yossi. 2004. “Educational reforms and inequalities in Israel: the MMI hypothesis revisited.” Sociology of Education 77(2), 103–120.Google Scholar
Cai, Fang. 2010. “Wage gap between Chinese college grads, migrants dropping,” People's Daily Online, 22 November, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/7207145.html.Google Scholar
Carnoy, Martin, Loyalka, Prashant and Froumin, Isak. 2013. “University expansion in the BRIC countries and the global information economy.” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 45(4), 36–43.Google Scholar
Freeman, Richard B. 2009. “What does global expansion of higher education mean for the United States?” NBER Working Paper No. 14962.Google Scholar
Green, Andy, Preston, John and Sabates, Ricardo. 2003. “Education, equality and social cohesion: a distributional approach.” Compare 33(4), 453–470.Google Scholar
Hannum, Emily, and Buchmann, Claudia. 2003. The Consequences of Global Educational Expansion. Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Art and Sciences.Google Scholar
Hannum, Emily, and Wang, Meiyan. 2006. “Geography and educational inequality in China.” China Economic Review 17(3), 253–265.Google Scholar
Hanushek, Eric A., and Woessmann, Ludger. 2008. “The role of cognitive skills in economic development.” Journal of Economic Literature 46(3), 607–668.Google Scholar
Hanushek, Eric A., and Woessmann, Ludger. 2011. “The economics of international differences in educational achievement.” Handbook of the Economics of Education 3, 89–200.Google Scholar
Heckman, James. 2005. “China's human capital investment.” China Economic Review 16(1), 50–70.Google Scholar
Li, Hongbin, and Wu, Binzhen. 2012. “China's educational inequality: evidence from college entrance exams and admissions.” China Data Center at Tsinghua University Working Paper.Google Scholar
Liu, Chengfang, Zhang, Linxiu, Luo, Renfu, Rozelle, Scott, Sharbono, Brian and Shi, Yaojiang. 2009. “Development challenges, tuition barriers and high school education in China.” Asia Pacific Journal of Education 29(4), 503–520.Google Scholar
Loyalka, Prashant, Chu, James, Wei, Jianguo, Johnson, Natalie, Reniker, Joel and Rozelle, Scott. 2014. “Inequalities in the pathway to college in China: when do students from poor areas fall behind?” REAP Working Paper No. 277, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Mincer, Jacob. 1984. “Human capital and economic growth.” Economics of Education Review 3(3), 195–205.Google Scholar
MOE. 2010. “Education as a long-term priority,” 12 July, http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/moe_2862/201010/109030.html. Accessed 10 January 2015.Google Scholar
NBS (National Bureau of Statistics). 1990. Tabulation on the 1990 Population Census of the People's Republic of China. Beijing: China Statistics Press.Google Scholar
NBS. 2010. Tabulation on the 2010 Population Census of the People's Republic of China, http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/pcsj/rkpc/6rp/indexch.htm.Google Scholar
NBS. various years. China Statistical Yearbook (various years), http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/.Google Scholar
Reimer, David, and Pollak, Reinhard. 2010. “Educational expansion and its consequences for vertical and horizontal inequalities in access to higher education in West Germany.” European Sociological Review 26(4), 415–430.Google Scholar
Rong, Xue Lan, and Shi, Tianjian. 2001. “Inequality in Chinese education.” Journal of Contemporary China 10(26), 107–124.Google Scholar
Schofer, Evan, and Meyer, John. 2005. “The world-wide expansion of higher education in the twentieth century.” Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law Working Paper No. 32, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Shavit, Yossi, Ayalon, Hanna, Chachashvili-Bolotin, Svetlana and Menahem, Gila. 2007. “Israel: diversification, expansion, and inequality in higher education.” In Shavit, Yossi, Arum, Richard and Gamoran, Adam (eds.), Stratification in Higher Education: A Comparative Study. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 39–62.Google Scholar
Simon, Denis Fred, and Cao, Cong. 2009. China's Emerging Technological Edge: Assessing the Role of High-end Talent. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sirin, Selcuk R. 2005. “Socioeconomic status and academic achievement: a meta-analytic review of research.” Review of Educational Research 75(3), 417–453.Google Scholar
Wang, Xiaojun, Fleisher, Belton M., Li, Haizheng and Li, Shi. 2007. “Access to higher education and inequality: the Chinese experiment.” Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) Working Paper No. 2823, University of Bonn.Google Scholar
World Bank. 1990. “World development indicators: school enrollment, tertiary (% gross),” http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.TER.ENRR/countries?page=4.Google Scholar
World Bank. 2000. “China: overcoming rural poverty.” Report No. 21105-CHA. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Wu, Xiaogang. 2010. “Economic transition, school expansion and educational inequality in China, 1990–2000.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 28(1), 91–108.Google Scholar
Wu, Xiaogang, and Zhang, Zhuoni. 2010. “Changes in educational inequality in China, 1990–2005: evidence from the population census data.” In Hannum, Emily, Park, Hyunjoon and Butler, Yoko Goto (eds.), Research in the Sociology of Education (Vol. 17). Emerald Group Publishing.Google Scholar
Yi, Hongmei, Zhang, Linxiu, Luo, Renfu, Shi, Yaojiang, Mo, Di, Chen, Xinxin, Brinton, Carl and Rozelle, Scott. 2012. “Dropping out: why are students leaving junior high in China's poor rural areas?” International Journal of Educational Development 32(4), 555–563.Google Scholar